Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

Disturbing images flashed through her mind; scenarios that rendered all that she had planned moot. She first imagined finding the chrysalis of Sweetblood shattered upon the ballroom floor, the powerful mage now free and filled with fury, and then the equally horrific imagining that the chrysalis was gone, stolen, not a piece to be found. She quickened her pace, catching up to the dog-like creatures sniffing and digging eagerly at the bottom of the closed ballroom doors.

Filled with anticipation, she gripped the knobs in her eager hands, turning them and pushing the doors open. The boggarts bounded into the room, howling and snapping at the air as if it were filled with prey.

A deadly spell of defense danced upon Morrigan's lips, crackling arcane energies ready to lash out at any enemy present, but the room was as she left it.

The twins, Fenris and Dagris, looked startled as they stood above the sarcophagus of solidified magick that held the body of Sweetblood the mage.

"Mistress?" Fenris asked, his voice filled with concern.

They were still doing as they had been instructed, maintaining the spell that would hopefully allow them greater access to the magickal forces imbued within Sanguedolce's cocoon.

The boggarts continued to pace about the room, howling and carrying on. Something had been there; of this she was certain. Morrigan strode naked toward the chrysalis, wanting to see with her own two eyes that her means to victory was still very much within her grasp.

She felt the twins' questioning eyes upon her bare flesh, but she paid them no mind as she reached down to wipe away the blood of the sacrifice that covered the mage's containment vessel, hoping to gaze upon the visage of the one whose power she had so come to desire. The blood had partially coagulated, and it sloughed off, plopping to the floor as she ran her hand across the cocoon's chiseled surface.

Morrigan actually breathed a sigh of relief as she caught sight of the form of the mage, still trapped within, but that relief quickly changed to concern as her eyes studied the frozen countenance of the arch mage all the closer. Something was different. If she was not mistaken, Sweetblood's expression had somehow changed.

And he appeared very angry.

The sleek, black limousine cut through the billowing red fog like a surgeon's knife through diseased flesh. In the driver's seat, the hobgoblin Squire sat quietly, piloting the vehicle through the impenetrable mist with an expertise that Clay found uncanny.

The shapeshifter gazed out his side window. Though morning, he could see practically nothing other than the undulating clouds of crimson. Even with the structure of his eyes changed, giving him the best possible vision, he could still not make heads or tails of where they were, or where they going.

"How do you do it?" Clay asked Squire from the backseat.

The goblin started, grabbing hold of the rearview mirror and manipulating it so that he could see into the back seat. "You talking to me?"

Eve shifted in the seat beside him, hugging herself as if cold, leaning her head against the glass of her window. "No, the other little twisted freak driving this car," she growled sarcastically. "Of course he's talking to you."

Clay shook his head. Squire and Eve certainly shared an interesting relationship. He was never quite sure if the two actually despised one another, or it was all some kind of act to deflect attention from the fact that they truly cared for each other.

"Hey, Eve, got a box of native earth in the trunk, why don't you lay in it?" barked Squire.

"Miserable shit," she grumbled, slumping lower and closing her eyes.

But then again…

"The driving," Clay said before Squire could launch his second, venom-filled volley. He moved forward in his seat to speak with the hobgoblin. "How do you manage to actually navigate through this stuff?"

Squire shrugged. "It's really instinctual," he said. "Kind of like traveling the darkness of the shadow paths." The goblin explained further. "I can feel where I need to go inside my head. It's weird, and hard to explain."

The vehicle suddenly banked to the left to avoid something in the middle of the road. Clay got a quick glimpse through the side window as the car sped past. If he wasn't mistaken, it looked to be nothing more than a rotting human torso and head, writhing maggot-like across the center of the road. Yet another of the pathetic things responding to the siren song that drew the dead to the Museum of Fine Arts. Their destination as well.

"You see that?" Squire asked him as he expertly steered the car back to the center of the road.

"Yeah," Clay answered. He could now see the shapes of other animated corpses shambling through the thick fog of crimson within the road and on either side. Squire managed to avoid them with ease.

We must be getting closer, Clay thought.

"Hey, you know what that guy in the road would be named if he were hung on a wall?" the hobgoblin asked.

Clay wasn't quite sure what the diminutive chauffeur was talking about. "What?" he asked. "I'm not sure I…"

"Art," Squire answered, stifling back a guffaw. "Get it? His name would be Art. He would be hanging on a wall? Art? It loses a lot if I gotta explain it."

Graves was sitting in the front seat and now the ghostly figure turned to look at the driver. "Maybe it would be wise if you just concentrated on your driving and ceased all attempts at humor," the ghost said coldly, the first words he had spoken since pulling away from the Ferricks' home in Newton.

Squire shook his gourd like head in disgust. "Jeez, try and lighten the mood a bit, and suddenly I'm treated like the friggin' bastard child of Carrot Top."

Clay leaned back in his seat, letting the uneasy silence again hold sway over the inside of the car. It was obvious that Graves did not appreciate Squire's attempts at levity, preferring the somber silence. Over years, Clay had seen the different ways in which soldiers prepared themselves for battle; no two warriors doing it in quite the same the way. He'd always preferred a little quiet reflection before the war, reviewing the multitude of shapes that he could possibly manifest in order to combat and defeat the threat he was about to face.

Clay gazed at the back of Graves's head, able to see right through it to the windshield in front of him. He didn't know the adventurer all that well, having worked with him only a handful of times, but he had been a man of science in the days when he was still amongst the living. Clay could only imagine how disconcerting it must have been for the man to be confronted with the existence of the supernatural. How do you prepare for something that you spent your entire living existence believing didn't exist? Clay understood why the spirit would have no patience for Squire's stupid jokes.

"I'm just pulling onto Huntington Ave," the hobgoblin said from the driver's seat. "It's only a matter of time now."

The road had become dense with the reanimated dead, and the chauffeur continued to do as well as could be expected to avoid hitting them, but the closer they got, the harder it was becoming. Clay flinched as the front of the vehicle struck the body of a woman, the impact spraying a shower of a thick, milky fluid across the expanse of windshield.

"Whoa, that's gonna leave a mark," Squire said beneath his breath, hitting the button to cover the windshield with cleaning fluid before turning on the wiper blades.

Squire dealt with his tensions of the coming conflict with humor. It was something that Clay was familiar with. In an age he now recalled only through the veil of time, he had known a great Sumerian warrior called Atalluk, who would gather his fellow soldiers the night before they were to wage war against their enemies and tell humorous stories about his childhood and his ribald adventures with members of the opposite sex. Clay smiled with the ancient memory. The men loved those tales; the stories helping them to relax, and to relieve the tensions they were most likely experiencing in regard to the approaching combat.